The Two Admirals

A late Cooper novel of fleet action, set in the Jacobite rising of 1745 when the British and French squadrons contested the Channel. Cooper had already written the first serious history of the United States Navy and wanted to put a fleet on the page; there was no American fleet of that size to write about in 1842, so he borrowed a British one and gave the ships and their two commanding admirals the character interest usually reserved for people.

It is the most technical of his sea books and the least read, which is roughly why it shows up on a curriculum built around difficulty rather than popularity.

Context: The third Cooper title on the adult list, alongside The Pilot and The Last of the Mohicans.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
• James Fenimore Cooper — the author, also the Navy’s first serious historian.
• The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea — his first sea novel.
• The Last of the Mohicans — his best-known book.